How Portable Media Centers Work

In our increasingly mobile society, portability is king. Thanks to easy-to-transport, high-tech products such as cell phones, laptops, personal data assistants and portable MP3 players, many of the tasks that can be accomplished at home on a personal computer can now be done on the road.

With portable media centers, you can store and access nearly all of your digital entertainment files on a single, lightweight unit about the size of a paperback novel. They can handle recorded television programs, movies, home videos, music and digital photos. You can even connect a portable media center to a television or stereo using the A/V-out jack when portability isn't necessary.

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In this article, you'll learn about the storage capacity and wide array of advanced features available in portable media centers.

Storage Capacity and File Types

Windows Mobile-based portable media centers currently feature 20-GB or 40-GB storage capacities and can store and play not only music and photos, but also video content. A portable media center with a 40-GB hard disk can hold up to 160 hours of video, up to 10,000 songs or tens of thousands of digital photographs. Archos currently offers non-Windows portable video player/recorders with similar capabilities to the Windows PMCs, but Archos' players feature up to 100 GB (400 hours of video) of storage.

File Types

Windows Mobile-based portable media centers support a wide variety of different file types, including the following:

Microsoft Windows Media Video and Microsoft Photo Story files (.wmv and .asf) at a resolution of 320x240 pixels and a bit rate that is less than 800 kilobytes per second (Kbps)

Windows Media Player 10 has the built-in capacity to convert oversized Windows Media Video files and JPEG pictures into a format and size that the PMC can handle. Windows Mobile-based portable media centers are not compatible with iTunes music files.